Internet service in Egypt, the UAE, India and other counties in the region was interrupted today when submarine cables in the Mediterranean Sea failed.Â

Cause of the failure is not known at this time, says operator Reliance GlobalCom. A total of three cables linking Italy and Egypt went down. A ship has been sent out to fix the problems.

Currently, services are being rerouted to backup cables and satellites. As rerouting measures fully kick in, services are expected to improve by early Saturday morning.

This isn’t the first time that cable service to the region has failed. Earlier this year, five separate undersea cables were cut between late January and early February, interrupting service to a number of countries. Â

There’s likely to be some serious failure analysis involved if we see some more pipes go off-line in the next week.

Starting this morning the Internet link is very slow, with 10-40% packet loss and 1.5 second RTT. This could be due to Qtel’s PCCWBTN link down starting after 8 a.m. AST. Traffic is routed via AS6453 (Teleglobe), which is heavily overloaded and oversubscribed. Of course, the FLAG Telecom link is not used for ADSL subscribers. So, the 2 MBPS ADSL link (largest residential package available in Qatar) real speed is around 200 kbps. This reminds me of home Internet access ten years ago.